A CHILDTHERAPIST Concert

Editor’s note:
(In agreement with the CHILDTHERAPIST band, previously unreleased music can be listened to on the our website. They are currently working on releasing their first album. @_childtherapist_)

CHILDTHERAPIST, composed of Tom Allsop (front man), Jacobus Benning (bass), Ismir Rajibayev (guitar) and Ileana Rutigliano (drums) are best described as anarchist proto-punk with a campy gender-bending performative flair. 

Friends and classmates at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Allsop, Benning and Rajibayev are often co-conspirators in some mischief or other. Be that presenting a ‘shit monster’ as an art history assignment or grave-digging and head-shaving on school property, this project is most definitely an extension of their audacious spirit. 

While playing fast and loose with lyrical notions of rhyme and metre, as well as veering away from traditional musical qualities, I had the unique pleasure of witnessing what they are no-doubt infamous for in the art-school circles here in Zuid-Holland - their live show. 

On March 29th CHILDTHERAPIST headlined at a new art space and gallery in The Hague, Kunstbar, as part of an experimental music evening titled ‘LIFESTREAM: ADOLESCENCE’, fittingly selected by Dominika Badyla to fit the bill. The poster elaborated on the theme of adolescence as; “a stage of violent power negotiation with the environment and the self”, the program showcasing “expressions of those conflicts through music and performance art”. 



CHILDTHERAPIST, both with the appearance of their lanky and pierced band members, and gross-out naivete of their lyricism, certainly embody the adolescent spirit, beginning their show by stripping their clothes, donning only fishnet stockings and white diapers. The age-bending act plays on the darker elements of their appellation, falling somewhere between the camp of The New York Dolls, the raised-noses of The Velvet Underground in their Warhol days and the comedic stylings of SNL’s The Lonely Island.

The show took place in the street-facing window of the gallery, with the audience standing gawking on the other side of the street, allowing the usual Saturday evening traffic of Thuisbezorgd cyclists, drunk pedestrians and taxi drivers to pass. The particular street, however, makes the show all the more interesting. Noordeinde, where the gallery is located, is home to none-other than the royal family of the Netherlands. While proclaiming no particular anti-royalist sentiments, the show acted as a royal ‘fuck you’ to the system. 

Benning, in describing himself and Rajibayev as looking like “a crackhead and someone who just got out of chemo”, you can imagine what the whole entourage looked like to passers-by. Some notable moments included lead singer Allsop, whose vocals are a cross between The Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman and the deranged howls of a mental patient, shouting the lyrics 

Fuck this town
I wanna get laid
I’m hard as hell
Get the Jesus freak

as a local street-entertainer dressed as the easter bunny cycled by, joined in on the chaos and revealed, under his costume, a t-shirt emblazoned with “Jesus”. People walking by stopped, jaws dropped, to record moments from the intro to ‘Red Headed Bitch’:

I do not like
Green eggs and ham
I do not like them
Sam - I - am
You know what I would like
Sam - I - am
Wouldn’t you like to know
Sam - I - am

We need our dicks SUCKED!

The pinnacle for me, however, was the royal police driving by in their patrol car mid ‘Fucking Bill Gates’

If I were Bill Gates
I’d fucking shoot myself

With the sound guy strategically turning the volume down as they crept by, giving the spectacle a gander, only to turn it all the way back up after they passed out of earshot, just in time for the song’s climax; a shrieked homage to Vengaboys’ ‘Boom Boom Boom’.

Although the entirety of the show was live streamed, and could potentially be found online somewhere, I’ll end with this; you just kinda had to be there man.  


Excerpt from Ashtray:
this evening
go for a ride
another sip
I take my beers Lukewarm

white stripes
on the asphalt
morph into
my ass sweat Lukewarm

this sunday
my anus prolapsed
this shit
can’t sit down

I drank from the ashtray
it feels like a
sunday morning
I drank  from the ashtray
it feels like a
sunday morning

Excerpt from Abortion clinic:
what do you need?
i need an abortion